1775-1817, British Novelist
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Jane Austen – [Income]
A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
Jane Austen – [Misfortunes]
Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. ''And what are you reading, Miss — -?'' ''Oh! it is only a novel!'' replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. ''It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ''; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
Jane Austen – [Fiction]
An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.
Jane Austen – [Engagement]
Business, you know, may bring you money, but friendship hardly ever does.
Jane Austen – [Money]
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
Jane Austen – [Neighbors]
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen – [Neighbors]
From politics it was an easy step to silence.
Jane Austen – [Silence]
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.
Jane Austen – [Marriage]
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
Jane Austen – [Judgment and Judges]
I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.
Jane Austen – [Work]
In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
Jane Austen – [Affection]
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen – [Bachelor]
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
Jane Austen – [Marriage]
It is indolence… Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.
Jane Austen – [Churches]
It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made — when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt — it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
Jane Austen – [Dance and Dancing]
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
Jane Austen – [Churches]
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
Jane Austen – [Optimism]
Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
Jane Austen – [Pity]
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
Jane Austen – [Ridicule]